The deception becomes obvious when we consider how utterly impossible it would be for the courts of Alabama, as at present constituted, to carry on their regular business and determine the cases of two hundred thousand qualified Negroes refused registration. Noble work in the Black Belt BY H. D. SLATTER Of a truth we may say that the upward career of the average Negro reads like a romance of the wildest creation. The terrible struggle to overcome the ignorance and superstition which slavery imposed upon him, the bitter contest with the phantoms of darkness, the persistent advancement into the light of intelligence with the shadow of a long record of intense cruelty and suffering constantly threatening before him and with the gloom of an inexorable race prejudice threatening his onward march toward a higher and grander civilization, this new citizen, undaunted by barriers of whatever sort, is forging his way to the front in every noble cause. Many inspiring examples of usefulness on the part of earnest young men who have received their training at such Institutions as Hampton and Tuskegee may be found in all sections of the south; but we know of few who are so unselfishly devoted to the work of elevating the masses of the race as Prof. William H. Holtzclaw, principal of the Utica Normal and Industrial institute, located one mile from the town of Utica, on a branch of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley railroad in the very heart of the Black Belt of Mississippi, where the Negroes outnumber the whites seven to one. Professor Holtzclaw was born in Roanoke, Alabama in 1872. At an early age he heard of Dr. Booker T. Washington and later attended the Tuskegee Institute where he received such convictions as to the wisdom of the principal’s course as to inspire him with the ambition to supplement, if possible, this great work. After his graduation he went to Snow Hill, also where he worked for four years in the Snow Hill institute, rising to the responsible position of treasurer of that institution. While at Snow Hill he made a very careful study of the condition of the Colored people in various parts of the south and settled upon Mississippi as the state in which he might render most valuable service.